What is wrong with this Coyote picture?

That is dog food on a road on Antelope Island State Park. Someone threw it onto the road it didn’t just fall from the sky.

Why is it there?

Maybe someone wanted a picture of the Coyote without anything obstructing the view.

It can’t be that the Coyote needed it because it doesn’t. They are extremely efficient hunters.

Having dog food in the road isn’t safe for the Coyote, it could be killed by a fast moving vehicle. Other animals might be attracted to the dog food and die from an impact.

Feeding wild animals is against the law in some areas and at the very least wild animals who are fed by humans tend to lose their natural fear of humans and that can have drastic consequences for the animal and any human they come in contact with.

Think of how bears used to be fed in some of our State and Federal Parks and remember the attacks and fatalities that happened in correlation to the bears losing their fear of humans. Having lived in Florida where people illegally feed Alligators it became common for me to see how Fido would go missing or get killed because the gators no longer feared humans.

So, what is wrong with this picture? Someone is messing with nature.

We picked up the dog food and threw it off of the road, in hindsight I should have put it into a trash bag and carried it to the trash.

20 Comments

Fern Culhane
December 17, 2012 at 9:11 am

am sure the state park rangers appreciated your actions too. They are probably stretched with many duties in their days. We can all be advocates for wildlife when we know what to do. Thanks for helping us learn!
Fern

Fern, the park ranger was very interested in finding out about the dog food on the road and appreciated the heads up. That road gets traveled a lot by the rangers and now they will be on the look out for dog food on it. Thank you so much for your comment.

LaNelle
December 17, 2012 at 4:47 am

Mia,
Thank you for taking the time to be a great person by removing the food it could have been a very bad situation ! Your photography’s are beautiful and warm my heart to see their natural beauty keep up the awesome work.

I would have removed the food, too. A long time ago at one of our local lakes, people used to feed the coyotes thinking that they wouldn’t go after the other animals and pets in the area if they did that. At that lake, there was another area where a large number of domestic geese hung out waiting for their favorite human to come feed them. The coyotes usually are very cautious about hanging out there because there are so many humans around that area all day and pretty much most of the night. During that time that the coyotes were being fed, several domestic geese in that area were killed and eaten by them. These were geese that lived there for years with few losses and in just a few days, several were gone, pieces of them strewn all over the place. I think a swan and a few ducks were killed, too, within a short time period. When they stopped feeding the coyotes, losses went back to normal in that area, usually a couple or few ducks during the winter months.

Darlene, thanks for sharing your story about what can happen when wild Coyotes are fed by humans. I’m very glad people stopped feeding the Coyotes there because it has probably saved their lives, the lives of the other animals in the area and could possibly have prevented a dangerous confrontation between the Coyotes and humans.

Earl
December 16, 2012 at 7:14 pm

Hello Mia,
People don’t understand that you don’t mess with Mother Nature without consequences.

Hi Earl, we saw this not long after we talked to you on the road to Garr Ranch, it might have been a quarter of a mile to the gate. I really hope the rangers catch the person and tell them exactly why feeding wild animals is wrong.

This is an example of how humans feel they “have to have a hand in” something. Humans feel they “have to have a hand” in our environment, in our streets, parks, etc. Since humans “have to build” for “humans” e.g. streets, boats, buildings, cars, airplanes, etc., they no longer discriminate between “human” paraphernalia, and the real environment out there. Can we coexist?

I lived up in Northern Ontario for a few years, people often got hurt because the wildlife was unafraid, mainly because people were careless with food waste but the principle is the same, you feed the wildlife, it becomes unafraid, a person is hurt and the animal is destroyed as a result. In this case the instrument of destruction could be a car. So careless and foolish

Yes Susan, when people stop feeding wildlife and getting wild animals habituated to people the incidents do drop in numbers. This was silly and selfish of the person who did this and it risked the Coyotes life.

Thanks Sherry, I’m 99.9% certain this was done on purpose, I mean how often does dog food fall out of a car in a location like Antelope Island State Park? Maybe near a campground but not miles & miles from one.

Yes, it is crazy Judy. No one has to do baiting to get an image of a Coyote on Antelope Island. Just be out there like you and I are and soon enough you’ll get the image you want. I hope the rangers catch this person.